Circulators have a wide variety of uses in commercial and military, space and terrestrial, and low and high power applications. A waveguide circulator may be implemented in a variety of applications, including but not limited to low noise amplifier (LNA) redundancy switches, T/R modules, isolators for high power sources, and switch matrices. One important application for such waveguide circulators is in space, for example, in satellites, where reliability is essential and where size and weight are important. Circulators made from a ferrite material are desirable for these applications because of their high reliability due to their lack of moving parts, which moving parts could wear down over time.
Generally, ferrite circulators are three arm devices used to route RF energy from a first waveguide arm to a second waveguide arm, while isolating a third waveguide arm. If switched to circulate in the opposite direction, they then can route RF energy from the first waveguide arm to the third waveguide arm, while isolating the second waveguide arm. This functionality is used in RF systems such as beam forming networks and switched beam antennas to reconfigure the antenna pattern of the system. In this manner, the switching circulators route the RF energy from a single source to a single radiating antenna element. However, some antennas have multiple antenna elements and to route RF energy from a single source to multiple radiating antenna elements, the circulators are combined with other waveguide components, such as magic tees.
For the reasons stated above and for other reasons stated below which will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the specification, there is a need in the art for a ferrite circulator that can be reconfigured to operate as either a circulator or a power divider.